Spirited and dynamic, with spectacular aromatic complexity, with touches of honey, ripe pear, quince, acacia, peach, quinine, green olive and a lovely, bitter bite. The palate is comparable in its interest and class, with a healthy dose of honeyed, toasty fruit and a crunchy, cooking apple slant (10.4%).
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SOME OF US are old enough to remember when the name Laški Rizling was a byword for cheap white wine of dubious quality from the former Yugoslavia. But if you belong to that generation, hold the thought and take a look at the list of wines that Ptujska Klet beat to win this year’s International Trophy.

It’s a who’s who of dessert wine: Sauternes, German eiswein, Austrian Ruster Ausbruch, Vin de Constance, Tokaj, vin santo… And, in a final taste-off with Inniskillin’s Riesling Icewine, this Slovenian sweet wine won over the judges with its fine fruit character, precision, excellent balance and length.

Winemaker Bojan Kobal puts this down to a winemaking style typical of the photogenic Podravje region. That means combining dried grapes with straw wine and producing something that ‘reflects the fingerprint of nature’. His goal, he adds, is ‘to make wines to suit every moment of people’s lives, but not lose the originality of the terroir and the signature of the winery’.

There were signs of this last year, when two of Kobal’s dry Sauvignon Blancs won Regional Trophies, but in truth the Ptujska Klet winery has been honing its craft for longer than that. It claims to be the oldest winery in Slovenia, dating back to 1239 and boasting the greatest cellar in central Europe, including wines from 1917.

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